Listen, spoke the voice with a quiver. The clouds drew in closer. A tremble gyrating on taut strings. A single note ambushing the whole, loud vastness in one instant. Life arose as darkness shed skin off skin. Pain spooked but oozed out care not unlike the watchful eyes of a father counting the swift and brief touches of stone on water like pulses of love for his son.

The last leap falls silent. Stone slips to the ground, ripples remain. Brief, the sense. The cushioned cloud dispersing in the wake of a skipping stone.

The weight of the hand releasing the stone. The weight of the hand resting on the child’s shoulder. The weighted cloud’s press into thin air. The voice opened and closed liminal space. Brief, it repeated in a whisper, brief…audible enough only to transmit the truth of the incessant coming and going of life.